I am starting to realize that I am backing all the wrong consumer products. It just came to me today that my ability to predict the winners and losers in the war of consumer products has been monumentally bad. I bet on the wrong horse in all the following races:

Blu-ray vs. HDDVD

Zune vs. iPod

DRM Music vs. MP3s (I purchased music from Wal-Mart and MSN Music)

iPad vs. Nook

ZX Spectrum vs. Commodore 64

Most of the choices were forced on me due to either a lack of resources or limited choice. In some cases I looked at the raw metrics (most RAM, CPU, Hard Drive, etc.). My only consumer success of note appears to be Xbox, and even then the battle with competing platforms will probably draw comparisons to the 100 year war. So considering my track record please feel free to ignore my well intended consumer product advice.